Software Develoment JourneyJava, Spring Framework, How-to

Code faster with Intellij IDEA live templates

Intellij IDEA – in my opinion the most productive IDE for Java – comes with bunch of features helping getting rid of writing repetitive code – which is a everyday business no matter what language you use.
One of them is live templates.

Live templates contain predefined code fragments. You can use them to insert frequently-used or custom code constructs into your source code file quickly, efficiently, and accurately.

IDEA comes with a set of live templates for Java, Maven, HTML, CSS and more and also enables to create custom templates.

Inserting live template

Use shortcut Command + J (Mac) / Ctrl + J (PC) to popup list of available live templates in current context

At the beginning it’s quite difficult to remember all you wish to use and going back and forth from code to settings or browsing list is not very efficient – especially when you don’t know what you are looking for. That’s why I created gallery of (in my opinion) most useful built-in live templates for Java and Maven that can be used as a cheat sheet:

Maven

dep – Inserts <dependency/>

pl – Inserts <plugin/>

repo – Inserts <repo/>

Iterations

fori – creates iteration loop

itar – iterates elements of array

itco – iterates elements of java.util.Collection

iter – iterates Iterable

itit – iterates java.util.Iterator

itli – iterates elements of java.util.List

Other

ifn – Inserts “if null” statement

inn – Inserts “if not null” statement

inst – Checks object type with instanceof and down-casts it

lazy – Performs lazy initialization

Plain

psf – public static final

psfi – public static final int

psfs – public static final String

thr – throw new

Summary

Using predefined Java templates is just a beginning.
You can find ready to use templates for particular frameworks on Github and I really encourage you to create your custom, project specific ones.

If you created interesting common use live templates for Java or related frameworks feel invited to post them in comments.